Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [93]
‘I knew,’ said the Doctor. ‘I was very impressed with your handling of the Gaffney Incident. Benny told me about it the last time I saw her.’
Joel looked astonished. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘You’re right. Between your imagination, your attention to detail, and your experience, you’re ideally suited to the job – dealing with aliens and faraway people quietly and peacefully, making sure they get home instead of being 189
dissected. You are, however, poorly suited to the position of Manipulator of the Time Lines.’
‘You’re a semi-mythical figure,’ said Joel. ‘Don’t give me vocational guidance counselling – it’s weird.’
‘It’s hard to be semi-mythical when there’s dirt in your socks,’ said the Doctor, tugging off a shoe. ‘Well, Mr Mintz, what are you going to do now?’
‘Doctor. . . I can’t go back. I killed someone.’ It was a whisper.
‘So that’s your excuse, is it?’
‘Excuse?’ said Joel. ‘Didn’t you hear me, I killed someone!’
‘If I used that as an excuse,’ said the Doctor, ‘I’d never get anything done.
Who did you kill, and why?’
‘A samurai. He was going to cut me in half.’
‘So it was self-defence?’
‘Of course it was.’ Joel was avoiding the Doctor’s stare, fiddling with the controls on the rifle. ‘If I hadn’t killed him, I would have died. I’m not about to go around murdering people.’
‘That’s the next step,’ said the Time Lord quietly.
Joel looked at him, feeling suddenly tiny and pitiful. ‘Help,’ he said.
‘I can’t help you,’ said the Doctor. ‘Like Chris, you’re going to have to be a hero under your own steam. Me, I’m puffed.’
After several cups of tea, Penelope was in much better shape. She felt as though her mind had decided that enough was enough, just at the moment, and she would take a little holiday from all of the activity buzzing around her.
At the moment this largely comprised Mr Cwej, wandering up and down the veranda of the main hall with a manic grin on his face, and Talker, perched on the roof, looking over the edge at him.
‘We know he’s alive,’ Mr Cwej was saying, once again. ‘That’s a beginning.
That’s a great beginning.’
‘But where does it lead?’ squawked Talker. ‘You can’t hand the pod over to them. We must free Psychokinetic.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I am afraid he will go mad. Begin to attack people, destroy things.’
Mr Cwej dug his thumb into his forehead. ‘Think! What do we have that they don’t!’
‘Monks. Vegetables. The pod,’ said Talker. ‘Maybe we can get Psychokinetic to make himself useful.’
‘So far his powers have only worked over a small distance,’ Mr Cwej pointed out. ‘We’d have to bring them here first. We need to act now.’
‘My time conveyance,’ said Penelope.
Mr Cwej and Talker both looked at her.
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‘There might be enough energy left in the egg for another two hops,’ she said. ‘If I can approximate the coordinates well enough, we could bring the Doctor here.’
‘That’s brilliant!’ Mr Cwej’s grin became even wider. ‘Where is it?’
‘I believe the monks have stored it in one of the buildings.’ Penelope climbed wearily to her feet. So much for her mental holiday. ‘Have them bring it out, and I’ll get my telescope and equipment from the cart.’
Dawn.
The Doctor was watching the sun come up, hands clasped behind his back, peering over the top of the cloth fence.
They had reluctantly allowed him to help attend the wounded.
They
seemed to fall into two categories. Some had vicious but not life-threatening wounds. Some were beyond the help even of the doctors and all their exper-tise in treating war wounds.
He found the young samurai he’d surrendered to a few days ago. An arrow through the eye, almost instant death. Perhaps he would have admired his opponent’s aim. No one knew what had become of his father, whether he was dead, or recovering from wounds at a nearby house, or attending to his duty without regard to his grief.
The Doctor had been listening to the sound of hoofbeats for a little